Capsule Shanghai is delighted to announce the opening of When We Become Us² the inaugural exhibition of Capsule Venice, the gallery’s newest venture, and an extension of Capsule’s long-lasting and ongoing commitment in China. Capsule Venice will present four exhibitions, accompanied by a programme of events, site-specific projects, and cultural activities curated by independent curator Manuela Lietti engaging the versatile indoor and outdoor spaces of the venue throughout 2024.

Artists; CAI ZEBIN LEELEE CHAN DANIEL CHEN RUDY CREMONINI SARAH FAUX FENG CHEN GAO YUAN ADRIAN GELLER IVY HALDEMAN HUANG HAI-HSIN ANTHONY IACONO ELIZABETH JAEGER KONG LINGNAN MAYA KRAMER MIRANDA FENGYUAN ZHANG YAO CONG PIXY LIAO LIAO WEN MEVLANA LIPP CHRIS OH DOUGLAS RIEGER CURTIS TALWST SANTIAGO TAO SIQI ALESSANDRO TEOLDI TIAN JIANXIN ALICE WANG WANG HAIYANG YAN XINVUE RYOSUKE KUMAKURA

Blindspot Gallery is pleased to present Pixy Liao’s first solo exhibition at Blindspot Gallery, marking her inaugural solo exhibition in Hong Kong. The exhibition titled “Comfort Zone” features selected works recently created by Liao, encompassing photography, video, and ready-made sculpture. Liao is known for her staged photographs of her and partner Moro, who is Japanese and five years her junior. Her works upend traditional representations of heterosexual relationships by inverting gender roles, often placing Moro as the subservient male muse and herself as the domineering artist-orchestrator. Tongue-in-cheek and imbued with a sense of humor, Liao’s work straddles between the performative and the autobiographical, unveiling her and Moro’s growing relationship.

Four Photographers
Yojiro Imasaka, Pixy Liao, Nadia Sablin, and Eric Thornton
Curated by Yojiro Imasaka
September 7 – October 22, 2023
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 7, 6–8pm Click here for RSVP

A group show is a delicate organism. It is the curator’s responsibility to find linkages - explicit or not - between artists who often have disparate practices. This requires great sensitivity but also a sense of storytelling. A good group show functions in some ways like a book. It has a sense of forward motion, of thematic confidence, of build-up and resolution.

In this exhibition, Four Photographers, we see curator and photographer Yojiro Imasaka choosing artists who might seem, at first glance, to be concerned with entirely different aesthetic issues. But as the show coheres, we sense the commonality in the various work.

Here we encounter issues of identity, mostly, but also subtle nods at freedom, protest, gender, and more. What we are reminded of, mainly, in Four Photographers, is how completely the personal can become not just political but also universal. Each of us walks the world as a human camera. The artists in this show, we realize, simply have the determination to act on the urge to transpose the private into the public - and with powerful results.

The World Surrounding Us – By Yojiro Imasaka

The four artists in this exhibition are all from the same generation as me and are based in New York. Though on the surface they are quite different from each other, there is a commonality in their work in that they all express important messages based on their own experience through the medium of photography. The world surrounding us is changing rapidly with the passage of time, but issues of culture, society, politics, and the environment remain major concerns in life,

regardless of era. These are evergreen topics for art, and the artists in this show grapple with these things in various ways.

Through her photographs, Pixy Liao asks questions about the concept of gender and the social roles it plays as filtered through her own life and cultural background. At first glance, these self-portrait works made with her partner Moro appear to simply be documenting their relationship. However, viewers may realize there is a sense of incongruity in the work. I believe this signals a glimpse into our own latent awareness of gender roles - and the dangers inherent in values that change with the times. Changes in this realm can come with feeling of ambiguity and opacity, and Liao’s work highlights those elements.

In talking about Eric Thornton’s work, it may be easiest to describe my relationship with him. I am an immigrant from Japan, and Eric is one of the Americans I have spent the most time with. I believe his openness to diversity has much to do with the fact that he was born and raised in New York, a city that is a microcosm of the world. And so, for him, it seems quite natural to have a strong resentment over the division of people caused by differences in political thought, religion, or race. Participating in numerous protests such as Black Lives Matter and documenting them, his series of works strongly impresses with the contemporaneity of photography by adding pictorial elements to the power of documentation.

In Nadia Sablin’s work, the sense of interplay between distance from and familiarity with the subject is indispensable. Born in Russia and raised in the United States, Nadia has been visiting her country of birth every year since her late twenties. In her eyes, the village where she spent her childhood summers is representative of the social and political realities across rural Russia. She focuses on the scenery and everyday life there, constructing a narrative that’s richer and more complex than the media-made perspective of Eastern and Western countries. Viewers might be surprised at how far our perceptions of Russia are divorced from the reality that is reflected in these images.

X Museum will present the 2023 X Museum Triennial exhibition, Home Is Where the Haunt Is, from August 27 through November 26, 2023. As a highly anticipated, recurring exhibition programme introduced to coincide with the opening of the institution, X Museum Triennial is a three-year recurring review of Chinese contemporary art and its development. With a continuous focus on emerging artists, the second edition, Home Is Where the Haunt Is, will bring together eight newly commissioned works and more than 30 recent works from 19 artists. Encompassing kinetic sculpture, e-textile, silk embroidery, site-specific installation and simulation video installation, the exhibition will offer a rich audio-visual experience that explores the enduring cultural connotations of “home” through the eyes of a new generation of Chinese artists and their diasporic community in the context of globalisation.

The exhibition responds to the complex social and historical construct of “home” and its etymological implication, “haunt.” Connecting ideas of intimacy, memory, heritage, ethnicity, alienation, possession and obsession, Home Is Where the Haunt Is brings together a wide group of multicultural Chinese artists whose fluid practice constantly straddles home and elsewhere, individual and community, past and present. As a universal social institution and an essential constituent of society, “home” denotes a dwelling place and bears the sentiment of the permanence of history. Broadening home as a hotbed for psychological states, the exhibition explores the evolving of human selves in a global context of cultural heterogeneity and that which invades or disturbs it. From physical contact induced by e-textiles in moments of isolation, to the various uses of mulberry in the system of Chinese Medicine, to coral and deep-sea creatures, works in the exhibition expand intimacy as a practice of generative kinship—the latest ecosystem formed by new technology and the relational existence of organisms.

History infiltrates the current through memory and heritage, through possession and obsession. By unravelling the multiple connotations of “home,” the exhibition also examines history’s effect on the present, it delves deeper into the roots of Chinese culture through a wide arrange of installations. Encompassing sound clips, audio-visual installations, and site-specific works, the artists in this exhibition use Xiang (Hunan) embroidery and Shaanxi shadow puppetry, folktales, and novels in their contemporary expression. Revolving around diasporic memories and fantastical futures, the exhibition also attempts to invoke the interstitial existence between now and then, time and space, presence and absence. The works in the exhibition oscillate between abandoned buildings on Bangkok’s streets, linger around the dimly-lit dance pool of ballrooms and excurse in the sugar refineries of the previous century. After the fragments of time are pieced together, these scenes of profound historical moments—often associated with a community’s ethnic relations and kinship—become places where hauntology comes to exist.

X Museum Triennial Award is founded in coincidence with X Museum Triennial, and it aspires to encourage a wider interest in contemporary Chinese art and to introduce emerging Chinese artists. For the second installment, one participating artist will be awarded for an outstanding presentation at the end of the exhibition. Comprising 3-4 influential international curators from different regions, X Museum Triennial Awards strives to have a diverse jury panel that provides multicultural perspectives.

The exhibition is curated by Poppy Dongxue Wu and Cyril Kuizhen Rao.

Artists Shu Cao, Chi Tien Lin Cheng, Shiwei Ding, Hei Di Li, Pixy Liao, Min Jia, Ke Peng, Qian Qian, Lili Ren, Chun Shao, Wing Po So, Shiwen Wang, Ye Wang, Huidi Xiang, Yibei Zhang, Yunyao Zhang, Ke Zheng, Zhilin Zheng, Payne Zhu

For media queries please contact media [​at​] xmuseum.org.

In the Bartels Gallery on Floor 1L and in the Schaenen and Class of 1953 Galleries on Floor 2L
Spontaneous and ephemeral, performance art in China developed in the 1980s and ’90s among close-knit artistic circles and audiences. Such performances relied heavily on photographs, video documentation, artist books, and oral accounts to be disseminated to subsequent audiences. Initially, these photographs and videos were considered documentations of performances rather than artworks in and of themselves. Increasingly, however, their outsize role in staging and mediating performances prompted new interest in their artistic potentials. As the Beijing-based artist Song Dong has remarked about his own photographed performances, “Is it a photographic work or a performance work? It’s very hard to say, so I always dislike calling my works documentations of performances.”

Performance photographs and videos allow secondary audiences to reimagine and become contemporary with performances past. A performance work might be staged spontaneously by an artist, photographed in distinct ways by different artists, witnessed by a small group of primary audiences, and exhibited many years later as a photograph or video for an entirely separate group of audiences. These instances of mediation and remediation point to the multimedial nature of performance works and pose questions about where the “real” artwork can be located, if at all.

Intersections between performance art and the rise of conceptual photography in China during the mid-to-late-1990s further blurred the boundaries between performance and documentation. In cases where a performance is staged without a live audience for the purpose of being conveyed as a photograph or video, the document itself becomes the only space in which the performance can be said to occur. Here, the photographic or video work itself becomes performative.

For artists aware of the potential risks of censorship, the ability to convey performances through a variety of different mediums, including underground artist publications, enhanced performance art’s subversive potential. Yet not all performances can be understood through this framework. While photographers Xing Danwen and RongRong were known for documenting seminal works by performance artists such as Zhang Huan and Ma Liuming in the 1990s, they have since expanded their art practice to emphasize the performative potential of photography and video. Other artists such as Song Dong, Qiu Zhijie, Lin Yilin, and Liu Bolin use photography and video to visualize the simultaneous visibility and invisibility of their own bodies. Videos by Chen Xiaoyun, Cheng Ran, and Jiang Zhi from the collection of Michael I. Jacobs, MD ’77, a prescient early collector of videos by emerging Chinese artists, thematize the visceral and theatrical body. More recently, a new generation of female artists including Chen Qiulin, Pixy Liao, Ma Qiusha, and Miao Ying—a recipient of the 2019 Cornell Tech \Art Award—has combined performance, photography, video, new media, and even artificial intelligence to address a range of topics from the individual’s relationship to the changing cityscape to gender, sexuality, and behavior in the age of media culture.

Between Performance and Documentation: Contemporary Photography and Video from China brings together works from the Johnson Museum collection and archival video footage from Cornell Library’s Wen Pulin Archive of Chinese Avant-garde Art with loans from artists, private collectors, and other institutions. Featuring a wide range of works, the exhibition reveals the multifaceted history of contemporary performance, photography, and video in China, while showcasing emerging artists who continue to push the boundaries of performance and mediation in radically new ways.

The exhibition was curated by Nancy P. Lin, Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, and Ellen Avril, Chief Curator and the Judith H. Stoikov Curator of Asian Art at the Johnson Museum, and supported by a gift endowed in memory of Elizabeth Miller Francis ’47, the Richard Sukenik ’59 Endowment for Photography, the Ames Exhibition Endowment, the Russell ’77 and Diana Hawkins Exhibition Fund, and the Jan Abrams Exhibition Endowment.

A symposium will be held at the Johnson Museum on November 16 and 17 in conjunction with the exhibition, supported by a generous gift from Judith Stoikov ’63 (schedule to be announced).

Artists: Guy Ben-Ner, Andrea Bowers, Miriam Cahn, Chto Delat, Asta Gröting, Sharon Hayes, Verena Jaekel, Pixy Liao, Joanna Piotrowska, Chantal Regnault, Allen Ruppersberg, Corinna Schnitt, Thomas Struth, Johan Tahon

Whether arising from blood relationships or elective affinities, family connections are a theme that affects everyone. The group exhibition FAMILY OF CHOICE. THOSE WHO WE ARE inquires into how we define affiliation and sketches a complex picture of what a family can be. It combines works by fourteen contemporary artists and issues an invitation to give thought to familial relationships, interpersonal constellations and their connection to society and politics.

The selected works bring to the fore the unconscious dynamic of familial relationships and tell of grand feelings, bizarre habits and special challenges. They thematize familial and social responsibility and present people who undermine conventional role attributions in order to pursue their own individual life-visions as a community. Whether within the mind or in actuality, the families we are born into or subsequently adopt are, in the best cases, the people with whom we identify, who leave a lasting influence on us, and who provide us with support and orientation.

The photographic series of family portraits by Thomas Struth and the sculptural group by Asta Gröting reveal subliminal affections and sensitivities within the family, while Joanna Piotrowska in her meticulously staged, photographic series Frowst (2013–2014) focuses on poses of ambivalence. Johan Tahon expresses unconscious and psychologizing interpersonal relationships in sculptures of fragmented bodies.

In a both engaging and oppressive manner, Miriam Cahn shows the cohesion of familial constellations in extreme situations. With Letters to an Army of Three (2005), Andrea Bower casts light on the complex motivations for (illegal) abortions. There is also an unmistakeable political attitude in the works of the artists’ collective Chto Delat who, with A Border Musical (2013/2023), conduct an examination of the meaning of individual and collective caregiving in the border areas between Russia and Norway. In their films, Guy Ben-Ner and Corinna Schnitt investigate family values, ownership structures and rituals.

In his monumental wall installation YOU AND ME PLUS (2007), Allen Ruppersberg combines the names of deceased artists into a mind map of figures of mental identification. Individually selected affinities outside the biological family are likewise the central focus of Chantal Regnault’s photographs which, at the end of the 1980s, documented the inner and outer dynamic of the House Ballroom scene in New York. The challenges faced by LGBTQ* families that do not conform to socially anchored norms regarding gender, sexuality, procreation and family are illuminated from the perspective of children and young adults by Sharon Hayes in the filmic work Ricerche:one (2019). And in their photographs, Verena Jaekel and Pixy Liao likewise focus on a changing conception with regard to familial lifestyles and role models so as to make clear once again that today family constellations are defined not so much by a norm, but through their emotional qualities and their respective self-definitions as a community: “What is of crucial importance is what is lived and how that which is lived is experienced on an emotional level.” (Andrea Maihofer)

Curated by Ute Stuffer (Director Kunstmuseum Ravensburg).

Accompanying program

Thursday, July 27, 6pm In Dialogue with Ina Neddermeyer, Director of the Art Section, Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen Tour of the exhibition

Thursday, October 12, 7pm Lecture by Prof. Dr. Elena Zanichelli, Director of the Mariann-Steegmann-Institut. Art & Gender “Intricate Family Relationships. (Post-)Familial Images of the Family as Portrayed in the Media over Time”

Thursdays, 5pm (on August 10, September 7, November 2) Curatorial guided tour With Ute Stuffer (Director) or Kristina Groß (Curator)

Pixy Liao's long-standing project ‘Experimental Relationship’ explores gender, relationship and cultural dynamics through a series of staged photographs, often featuring herself and her partner Moro.

上海摄影艺术中心(SCoP)荣幸呈现

“自我：新纪实摄影”

PERSONAL:

A NEW FORM OF DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY

2023.04.08 – 2023.07.29

March 12 – April 29

Opening Sunday March 12 in presence of the artist

Attention : Klapdorp 2 Antwerpen

2/3 gallery invites you on the occasion of International Women’s Day, on 8 Marchbegining with the hour 18:00 at the opening of the personal exhibition “The woman who clicks the shutter” of the artist Pixy Liao. Pixy Liao’s photos will be exhibited for the first time in Romania, and the opening event will take place in the presence of the artist.

Pixy Liao-The woman who clicks the shutter

2/3 gallery | French Street no. 4

March 8 opening | 18:00

March 8 – April 23 | Wed-Thu: 14:00 – 19:00

March 9 in converstation | 19:30

Cassina Projects is pleased to announce Bodies and Souls, a group exhibition curated by Manuela Lietti in collaboration with Capsule Shanghai, featuring works by Feng Chen, Huang Hai-Hsin, Wang Haiyang, Pixy Liao, Liao Wen.

L21 x JPS PARIS

We are very happy to announce this new project together with JPS PARIS. The exhibition “L21 Broadcasting from Paris” opens next Thursday 12/01 and can be visited until 12/02.

Artists

Álvaro Gil
Ben Edmunds
Geran Knol
Hannah Hanski
Marc Badia
Mira Makai
Pixy Liao
Richard Woods

📍 JPS Gallery Paris
12 Rue Notre Dame de Nazareth, 75003 Paris, France

I have not loved (enough or worked) – the intimacy of the title speaks to the individual, implying that you yourself have not done enough, or calling into question what you have done. It is an emotionally moralistic title which measures your personal and professional productivity in relation to feelings of guilt, shame, anger and despair and to matters of connection, care for others, and care for the self.

Love cannot be separated from work. In addressing love’s relationship to labour – specifically the labour of love – knowing it is impossible to untangle love from work, and meaningless to suggest otherwise, this exhibition does not critique such labour as precarious or hidden. Nor does it suggest that work needs to be measured by compensation and utility or imply that it is wholly perpetuated by structures of power, as if such constructions are mutually exclusive, capable of containment and isolation. Instead, the exhibition reflects on how people hold themselves together and support each other is analogous to how nations, territories and regions construct and hold themselves together as a whole.

The work of each artist in this exhibition exists almost like an experiential, literary tale – one that opens out our experience of love and longing, loneliness and loss, and which contemplates how our understanding of these tangled, at times tortuous notions shape our relationships to the world as collectives, as pairs and as other social assemblies. The exhibition reveals how deeply enmeshed our bodies, and the subjective forces of love and desire, are within the fantasies of ‘the good life’.

Bringing together works in video, photography, painting and sculpture by Hai-Hsin Huang, Daisuke Kosugi, Pixy Liao, Lin Zhipeng (aka No.223), Rinko Kawauchi, Sejin Kim, Lieko Shiga, and Tao Hui, the exhibition articulates the ways that people are fragile, finite. Their bodies, their subjectivities, are composed of pathways that need careful guarding and constant negotiation, just as feelings, memories and emotions pour out from each of us and complicate all kinds of encounters. It is this energetic dualism that defines our cultural, social and economic worlds and that we can reshape by uttering our intentions, asking questions, formulating ideas and committing to lofty abstractions.

By doing this, we might open up nasty wounds behind our hearts, and name the layers of love and loss that animate us, that reveal how our vulnerability is not a weakness but rather a place from which we compose new ways of being in the world and with each other, as friends, family, workmates and lovers … or all at the same time. Such sentiments provide a platform to consider how these works were brought into being under an impulse to assert the complex existence of a temporal, multiply-inflected subject, in flux with the world around it. The project is an acknowledgment of the strange agency we fragile people have when we participate in that mobile re-shaping, together and alone.

November 17 – December 22, 2022 Opening Reception November 17, 6-8pm dieFirma, Cooper Square, NYC

We are pleased to inaugurate dieFirma’s Riso Studio with Printing the Future: The Riso Revolution, a collaboration with artist and curator Panayiotis Terzis. The exhibition features work by more than 250 artists showcasing various book and print objects from across the globe. Also on exhibit will be a collection of limited-edition prints made exclusively for this event, all using the Riso printing process.

Printing the Future conveys the explosive nature of this trend with works that are both open and limited-edition prints, as well as zines, books, and installations. The exhibition, located in the basement space of 32 Cooper Square with over 100 works, creates an immersive experience showcasing the many ways in which the Riso process is used by makers.

The death of print has been predicted for more than half a century, but the artists in this exhibition are proving that print media and Riso methods are not only thriving but are revolutionizing visual culture. The impact of this environmentally friendly medium – using rice-based inks and customizable small-batch print runs – can be seen in art book fairs, zine fests, and comic book events worldwide. The hands on process involves color mixing and produces a vibrant and retro look that has inspired makers from a wide range of mediums to use in collaborations with everything from luxury brands to fine art, graphic design and digital animations.

The Risograph Duplicator was created in the 1980s in Japan, where it was marketed to churches, schools, and restaurants as a fast and affordable alternative to traditional copy technology. Soon, this flexible and adaptable workhorse attracted artists with its capacity to control color layers and positioning. In expanding their art, this network of creatives has pushed the limits of what the Risograph can do and made it a global phenomenon that is transforming both print and digital visual media. During the exhibition, we will be conducting a talk event and workshop. In addition, on display are rare archival items documenting the development of the Risograph by Riso Kagaku Corp.

dieFirma’s exhibition captures this wave of dynamic Riso print work created by some of the most innovative artists and publishers working today.

Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony Side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord, why don't we?

• Paul McCartney

Since 2007, the artist Pixy Liao plays, experiments and portrays her relationship with her partner Moro, 5 years younger than her and of Japanese nationality. Although she has been living in New York for years, she grew up in China where she felt the pressure that the “right thing” was to be with someone older than her and to follow the norms around heterosexual relationships. As soon as she realized that her story with Moro defied certain conventions and, in some way, empowered her, she started the “Experimental Relationship” project, which has been evolving for years alongside her relationship with her partner. The photographs exhibited in Pixy Liao’s first individual exhibition at L21 Gallery are from the year 2021 and were created during the pandemic. During those months the couple traveled to cities near New York and in one of the places where they stayed there was a piano. The instrument was the trigger for the series of photographs “Piano Duets”. As the artist explains, there is a parallel between these images of four-hand chords and a couple living together: you need to be listening to each other all the time and be at the same level of focus and positivity to play the notes beautifully together. In addition to being visually beautiful, looking at these photographs where an instrument is being played stimulates us to imagine sounds, albeit subliminally. In this way, the sense of sight is no longer the only one that intervenes, allowing emotions to arise from remote places. In fact, Pixy Liao's photographs often evoke senses such as touch or even taste, which enrich our perception of the images. Other exhibited works such as “Forefinger” or “I Push You” poetically subvert the power relationship between men and women that is socially internalized. They are disconcerting in a subtle way, but enough to make us see that something challenges us, or even bothers us. This allows us to reflect on stereotypes or our own prejudices around relationships. The “Piano Duet” exhibition invites us to observe the beauty that emerges from the photographs and at the same time listen to our self-talk, which might surprise us.

L21 BARCELONA

Carrer Salvador 24, 2º 08902 L’Hospitalet de Llobregat Barcelona, Spain

Entrance via Calle Salvador

Installation Photos

Co-curated by Rehema Barber, KIA Chief Curator and Larry Ossei-Mensah, Independent Curator

Presenting works culled from the KIA’s collection, combined with borrowed works from around the U.S., Unmasking Masculinity for the 21st Century will investigate how artists use tradition, contemporary practice, and performance to explore the construction of masculinity in North America. Co-curated by Rehema Barber, Chief Curator of the KIA, and highly acclaimed independent curator Larry Ossei-Mensah, they seek to create an exhibition that is also a forum to engage the community in conversations led by artists, community members, and scholars.

Unmasking Masculinity for the 21st Century aims to survey the construction of masculinity among diverse communities and individuals, as well as how artists have responded to, reframed, or reclaimed the concept of masculinity throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Throughout the nearly 50-year period that Unmasking Masculinity explores, the exhibition seeks to present a wide range of representations of masculinity. The exhibition explores the construction of masculinity beyond biological traits to examine the ways in which it intersects with various social factors such as gender, race, sexuality, and socioeconomic status. Unmasking Masculinity investigates how all of these factors continue to influence understandings of masculine identities today.

Artworks within the exhibition by Nate Lewis, jc lenochan, James Luna, Catherine Opie, and others will delve into the impacts of colonization and imperialism, socioeconomic status, and socialization during adolescence in establishing society’s understandings of masculinity. Other works by artists like Keith Anderson, Kahlil Joseph, Juliana Huxtable, and Cheryl Pope will examine the psychological influences and ideological systems that affect contemporary understandings of masculinity. Works by artists such as Jaishri Abichandani, Brendan Fernandes, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Arthur Jafa will speak to the mythologies surrounding masculinity, while challenging dominant social mores dictating sexual identity.

This exhibition, in its entirety, endeavors to probe how artists use or dispel mainstream ideologies or traditional norms as a means to delve into perceptions and cultural socialization. As a result, the curators ask viewers to consider the meanings and embodiment of masculinity in a global context, past and present. The works and artists featured in Unmasking Masculinity for the 21st Century will reveal the complex and contradictory notions of manhood in our society, while encouraging visitors to explore how varying ways of thinking about masculinity can give rise to meaningful conversations about identity for future generations.

Artists Participating in Unmasking Masculinity for the 21st Century: Faisal Abdu’Allah and Eric Baillies, Jaishri Abichandani, Anthony Akinbola, Keith O. Anderson, Mark Bradford, Sheila Pree Bright, Nick Cave, Jordan Eagles, Kota Ezawa, Brendan Fernandes, Derek Fordjour, Jeffrey Gibson, Félix González-Torres, Lyle Ashton Harris, Earlie Hudnall Jr., Juliana Huxtable, Arthur Jafa, Ulysses Jenkins, Samuel Levi Jones, Kahlil Joseph, Alex Katz, Mike Kelley, Yashua Klos, William Larson, Deanna Lawson, Mark Leckey, jc lenochan, Nate Lewis, Pixy Liao, Richard Lou, James Luna, Erick N. Mack, Robert Mapplethorpe, Demond Melacon (Big Chief Demond), Yasumasa Morimura, Catherine Opie, Joe Overstreet, Ebony G. Patterson, Cheryl Pope, Patrick Quarm, Robin Rhode, Larry Rivers, Collier Schorr, Roger Shimomura, Richard Conrad Swanson, Kenneth Tam, Felandus Thames, Andy Warhol, and William Weege, Kehinde Wiley, and avery r. young.

Along with an extensive schedule of programming, a full-color catalog will accompany Unmasking Masculinity for the 21st Century with contributions from the curators, Jeff Chang, Omar Lopez-Chahoud, Anuradha Vikram, and Maurice Wallace.

Yes, we want all people to have the same rights and opportunities! Yes, we want to use art to raise awareness and to enable sustainable and effective encounters! Yes, we want to contribute to equality and to encourage and empower people who are marginalized or affected by discrimination. And yes, the world would be a better place if we were all feminists: “We should all be feminists!” (C. N. Adichie). The exhibition Empowerment brings together diverse feminist approaches and understands these as progressive methods to analyze the societies of the world with the means of art and to show possible ways out of the global crises.

Despite worldwide movements, demonstrations, and petitions to establish equality, it is still not possible in the twenty-first century to speak of comprehensive gender equality with regard to women and LGBTQIA+ communities—neither in this country nor elsewhere. In many places, structural relationships of power and inequality prevent equal payment or the remuneration of domestic work and ensure oppression and exploitation up to physical violence or even murder: Countless artists worldwide react to these untenable conditions with their works in order to achieve equal and future-oriented life opportunities for themselves and other marginalized people. Now is exactly the right time to gain an overview of how artists imbue their art with political meaning and create such fascinating and evocative works of art.

With the exhibition Empowerment, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg is for the first time offering such a comprehensive global overview of art and feminisms of the twenty-first century with roughly 100 artistic positions from some fifty countries from all continents. Within the framework of seven thematic fields that have emerged from the worldwide research (Protest & Empowerment, Gender & Identity, Herstories & Other Narratives, Desired & Violated Bodies, Labour of Care, Planetary Challenges, Feminist Futures), the artworks will explore the following questions, among others: How do artists act out of their respective situations in the postcolonial, digital present? What emancipatory understanding underlies their art? How do they broaden their view of a feminist-oriented future? Questions regarding social inequality, sexism, racism, migration, the relationship of bodies, technology, and ecological concerns will also be negotiated. These issues affect everyone.

In order to do justice to these globally significant perspectives, several international networks of scholars, curators, and artists were initiated for Empowerment. Our own research was thus supplemented by artistic proposals from globally active regional experts. The curatorial perspective has also been expanded by the invited collectives Nacional TROVOA (Brazil), Njabala Foundation (Uganda), What the hELL she doin! (Great Britain/ Kenya/South Africa/Uganda), AXA projects (China), and Sandbox Collective (India), each of which will curate their own Guest Space within the exhibition. Empowerment is presented in a scenography designed especially for the show by the award-winning Berlin studio raumlabor.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive publication in cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education: Empowerment. Kunst und Feminismen (Art and Feminisms) with contributions by roughly fifty international authors and interview partners, edited by Andreas Beitin, Katharina Koch, and Uta Ruhkamp, with 500 pages, approx. 400 illustrations, German (separate English text edition), available for only 7 € in the museum shop, at kunstmuseum.de/shop, or at bpb.de (plus postage).

Participating Artists

Ebtisam Abdulaziz, Stacey Gillian Abe, Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai, Heba Y. Amin, Maja Bajević, Natalie Ball, Yael Bartana, Mehtap Baydu, Alexandra Bircken, Benedikte Bjerre, Monica Bonvicini, Phoebe Boswell, Andrea Bowers, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Candice Breitz, Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová, Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo, Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo, Birgit Dieker, Display Distribute, Zehra Doğan, Anna Ehrenstein, Ndidi Emefiele, Nona Faustine, Renata Felinto, Nathê Ferreira, Keltie Ferris, Kasia Fudakowski, Regina José Galindo, Ellen Gallagher, Goldendean, Gabrielle Goliath, Jenna Gribbon, Nilbar Güreş, Shilpa Gupta, h.arta group, Mathilde ter Heijne, Hyphen-Labs, HOU I‑Ting, Chen Jialu, Patricia Kaersenhout , Gladys Kalichini, Šejla Kamerić, Mari Katayama, Kerolayne Kemblin, Yuki Kihara, Seo-Kyung Kim & Eun-Sung Kim, Jakob Lena Knebl, Yaka Huni Kuin, Laetitia Ky, LASTESIS, Kitso Lynn Lelliott, Pixy LIAO, Laís Lino, Ann Lislegaard, XIAO Lu, Maria Macedo, Mary Maggic, Senzeni Marasela, Teresa Margolles, Taianã Mello, Silvana Mendes, Mitti Mendonça, Aline Motta, Shana Moulton & Nick Hallett, Zanele Muholi, Kresiah Mukwazhi, Marina Naprushkina, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Zohra Opoku, Tanja Ostojić, Pacific Sisters, Rosana Paulino, Âmbar Pictórica, Irena Jukić Pranjić, #purplenoise, Pushpamala N, Pussy Riot, Xiaoshi Qin, Lisa Reihana, Elianna Renner, Tabita Rezaire, Pipilotti Rist, Tracey Rose, Boryana Rossa, Raeda Saadeh, Larissa Sansour & Søren Lind, Mariela Scafati, Berni Searle, Selma Selman, Mithu Sen, Lerato Shadi, Tejal Shah, Nazaré Soares, Joulia Strauss, Melati Suryodarmo, Sandeep T K, Newsha Tavakolian, Elena Tejada-Herrera, Bussaraporn Thongchai, LIN Tianmiao, Wu Tsang, Moara Tupinambá, Kawita Vatanajyankur, Mônica Ventura, Kara Walker, Leafā Wilson alias Olga Hedwig Krause mit Faith Wilson & Olive Wilson, Anna Witt, Ming Wong, Shevaun Wright, Juliana Xukuru, Jing Y., LEI Yan, CAO Yu, Mia YU, Jade Maria Zimbra

Collektives / Guest Spaces

AXA projects (China / Germany): Antonie Angerer, Anna-Viktoria Eschbach, Xiaotian Li

Nacional TROVOA (Brasil): Yedda Affini, Nutyelly Cena, Bianca Leite, Bárbara Milano und das gesamte Netzwerk

Njabala Foundation (Uganda): Pamela Enyonu, Martha Kazungu

Sandbox Collective (India): Shiva Pathak, Nimi Ravindran

What the hELL she doin! (Great Britain / Kenya / South Africa / Uganda): Sonia E. Barrett, Syowia Kyambi, Immy Mali, Usha Seejarim

More informations about the work of Laetitia Ky can be found here.

This English book is published to complement the German-language publication Empowerment. Kunst und Feminismen (Art and Feminisms), which has been produced in cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education (available for €3 in the museum shop, at kunstmuseum.de/shop, or at bpb.de (plus postage).

Curators: Andreas Beitin, Katharina Koch, and Uta Ruhkamp

Curatorial Assistants: Regine Epp and Dino Steinhof

On June 24, 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that abortion was not a constitutional right for women, it reignited the world's thinking about women's body autonomy. Women, the one that breed and destroy life, the boundaries of their behavior are once again constrained.

This exhibition does not intend to provide a reference answer directly to the issue of "abortion" (whether women have the legal right to use their bodies), on the contrary, it tries to present how women voice and use their bodies over a long period of time, the struggles and difficulties between them, and the impact they have suffered.

As early as more than 2,000 years ago, Bible, the basic text that established the basic values and legal spirit of Western society, noted one of the earliest social extreme cases in the "Book of Judges". In the patriarchal and patriarchal society, the concubine of an Israeli priest was raped and murdered, then her husband divided her body into 12 pieces and distributed it to the 12 tribes of Israel—in such an event, the female body is both gender, social, and even more political—and thus provoked the "sense of justice" of the 11 tribes, resulting in a massacre in which 11 tribes nearly wiped out one tribe.

The author at the time, ingeniously after the body was delivered to all parts of Israel, used imperative sentences to ask the recipients and readers, "Consider it”, “Take counsel" and,”Speak" up". And those who received it at the time, the chosen action was to collectively kill the tribe that allowed this to happen.

Today, although women's personal safety has gradually been carefully protected, for example, the "Stalking and Harassment Prevention Law" has been implemented in Taiwan, but have women achieved autonomy over their bodies? What happened in the United States tells us that how women treat their bodies, in addition to being unable to control their own (not considered to be able to make the best decisions for their own or others' lives), has also become a political tool and a social issue. Such a "comeback" is actually making everyone in the society "Consider it" again.

Building on such a social reality, this exhibition concerns and presents how women explore their own feelings and establish their own thinking in expressing themselves, finding themselves, and in the gap between relationships. To this end, the exhibition brings together female artists other than Taiwan, such as Patty Chang who grew up in the United States, Pixy Liao who stayed in the United States to live and work after studying in the United States, and Zhu Tian who lived, studied, married and worked in London since middle school, and Ma Qiusha, who was born and raised in Beijing, uses her own body to express her own thinking from her growth experience and different stages.

Unlike the above-mentioned female agencies, some women use others to complete such expressions. In the female body of 9mouth’s series "Menstrual", different women ask the artist to photograph them in the location chosen by the women. In the process, men become tools and are used by women. Although the artist can publish these exploited results with his own name, these images are decided and agreed by women. The stereotypes of men and women are replaced and reversed in this relationship and process. It is the story behind the images.

Finally, this exhibition deliberately vacates the position of Taiwanese artists, in order to show that the situation of women expressing themselves through their bodies is still in the process, and this may be the most mainstream and direct method, but also invite women in Taiwan or those who have Gender-conscious to consider it, take counsel, and speak up about their feelings and their feelings.

Curator: Pinyu Liu Artists: Ma Qiusha, Zhu Tian, Patty Chang, Pixy Liao, 9 Mouth

The time between messages, the length between reunions, the distance between lovers – our intimate lives are filled with spaces. Whether they be passionate or painful, absences punctuate our daily routines with reminders of a beloved when they are no longer there. From heady first meetings to bittersweet goodbyes, throughout it all, love haunts us like a ghost.

Where have we looked for love? Within a humble bowl of rice or the fantasy of a boyband, either real or imagined, the artists in I Loved You search for the sites of our intimate lives. Qiu Jiongjiong leads us beneath the bustle of Beijing to a smoky underground bar echoing with songs of longing. Gao Rong recreates the warmth of her grandparents’ home with needle and thread, rendering brick as soft as a favourite sweater. For Hu Weiyi the trace of love lingers for a moment on his partner’s skin. For Jiang Zhi its memory burns brightly like a flower caught ablaze. From old rickshaws to abandoned playgrounds, love turns up in unexpected places.

Yet love can seem as elusive as a flower in a mirror or the moon in water. Written under the haze of intoxication, Shi Yong immortalises the fevered poetry of his friend in a pool of red neon lights. Glimmering like the embers of a fading fire, his work conjures the words of Pushkin: “I loved you; and perhaps I love you still / The flame, perhaps, is not extinguished…”

Curator: David Williams Aritists: Shi Yong, Ren Hang, Huang Shun-Hsing, Zhang Peili, Hu Weiyi, Liao Guohe, Zheng Haozhong, Huang Po-Chih, Pixy Liao, Shao Yinong, Lin Chuan-Chu, Zhou Zixi, Jiang Zhi, Li Lang, Nortse, He An, Guo Hongwei, Jin Shi, Hu Jieming, Chen Yujun, Hou Lien-Chin, Ouyang Chun, Qiu Jiongjiong, Zhang Hai’er, Gao Rong, Song Dong, Geng Xue, Zhu Jia, Wang Jun-Jieh, Sin Wai Kin, Wu Junyong

This exhibition presents 19 artworks by seven artists, born in mainland China in the 1980s. Belonging to what is referred to as the ba ling hou generation, they grew up in a post-Mao China shaped by the one-child policy and the influx of foreign investment. Comprising painting, sculpture, performance, installation, video, digital art, and photography, the exhibition reflects the dramatic economic, political, and cultural shifts the artists have experienced in China during their lifetimes.

The exhibition’s title, Mirror Image, refers to the double reflection at the heart of the exhibition. Rather than emphasizing their “Chinese-ness,” these artists’ respective practices are born of a contemporary China where Starbucks can be found in the Forbidden City and the internet permits them access—despite the obstacles of censorship—to a host of influences beyond geographical boundaries.

Organized by Barbara Pollack, guest curator, with Hongzheng Han, guest curatorial assistant.

Participating Artists Tianzhuo Chen (Born 1985 in Beijing, China; lives and works in Beijing) Cui Jie (Born 1983 in Shanghai, China; lives and works in Shanghai) Pixy Liao (Born 1979 in Shanghai, China; lives and works in Brooklyn, New York) Liu Shiyuan (Born 1985 in Beijing, China; lives and works in Beijing and Copenhagen, Denmark) Miao Ying (Born 1985 in Shanghai, China; lives and works in Shanghai and New York City) Nabuqi (Born 1984 in Inner Mongolia, China; lives and works in Beijing, China) Tao Hui (Born 1987 in Chongqing, China; lives and works in Beijing, China)

Family means (chosen) kinship, blood ties and sometimes lifelong bonds – and the perpetual renegotiation of boundaries, regardless of how much fondness and affection are involved. Kinship has at once nothing and everything to do with points of similarity and common ground in day-to-day life and with the ideas we have about everyday realities. We are part of a family – sometimes only on paper and sometimes as a community that is made up of friends who are devoted to one another over the course of their lives. Communities play a key role in today’s world: they are crucial to our decision-making and help to mold us and shape the way we think, feel and act. The (chosen) family is depicted in different ways in photography and art: photographers document everyday family life and use the camera to capture moments of heightened emotion. Family members can also become partners in the photographic process, contributing to the act of image-making. This finds its way into the exhibition as well as genealogical projects in which artists set out to explore their own personal histories on the basis of the lives their ancestors lived.

Just like the photographic testimony we have of them, family stories speak of diversity, individuality and collectivity, intimacy and distance. Family and chosen family imply chaos and happiness, quirky habits and the sharing of everyday banalities and powerful feelings. At best, family and community represent a familiar slice of home.

An exhibition with works from the Fotomuseum Winterthur collection, along with international loans and images from Winterthur and Switzerland.

With works by Aarati Akkapeddi, Richard Billingham, Larry Clark, Charlie Engman, Seiichi Furuya, Nan Goldin, Pixy Liao, Diana Markosian, Anne Morgenstern, Mark Morrisroe, Dayanita Singh, Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Annelies Štrba, Leonard Suryajaya, Alba Zari and many more.

“All human desire is poised on an axis of paradox, absence and presence its poles…” – Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet

The body has long been a subject of the visual arts to communicate desire, often through patriarchal, normative and binaristic modes of interpreting both gender and sexuality. As a malleable medium, the body proclaims much by its appearance as well as its nonappearance. Eroticism is also an elusive, subjective and dynamic conceptual yet corporeal experience. Intervening in a long tradition of the nude body’s association with eroticism, artists today are using the body as a charged and fluid meaning-making agent. The first of a recurring exhibition series highlighting living artists, F*CK ART: the body & its absence explores nuanced evocations of the erotic body.

Working across mediums such as performance, sculpture, film, photography, ceramics, painting, drawing, fiber arts, and new media, F*CK ART brings together eighteen artists who share the collective urge to uninhibitedly explore the contours of desire and arousal in our current moment. The works of art on view play with art history’s preoccupation with the nude figure and rejection of the pornographic. Through varying examinations and meditations, the exhibition explores the body’s role in subjectively registering intimacy, fantasy, and longing.

Featured Artists:
CAJSA VON ZEIPEL, COYOTE PARK, NICKI GREEN, JIMENA CROCERI, ALINA PEREZ, MARIE KARLBERG, KAYODE OJO, CHERRY BRICE JR., CLIFFORD PRINCE KING, JUSTIN YOON, PACIFICO SILANO, VICTORIA DUGGER, TAO SIQI, MOTOKO ISHIBASHI, PIXY LIAO, CASEY KAUFFMANN, ERIN M. RILEY, ALEXANDRA NEUMAN

CURATORS Eve Arballo, Curator Emily Shoyer, Consulting Curator

CURATORIAL ASSISTANCE Kayla Janaé Smith, Curatorial Project Assistant Xavier Danto, Collections Assistant Megan Villa, Former Curatorial Project Coordinator

EXHIBITION DESIGN Eunice Yunjeong Lee

EXHIBITION PRODUCTION Cletis Chatterton

TECHNOLOGY TEAM Edgar Samudio Winston Forgenie Jr.

INSTALLATION & CONSTRUCTION TEAM Allison Halter Sara Sciabbarrasi Kiersten Lukason Flores Painting

LENDERS Company Gallery CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions PIEDRAS Galleria Deli Gallery Downs & Ross STARS Sargent's Daughters Lyles & King CAPSULE Shanghai P·P·O·W Gallery

YOU CAN CALL IT LOVE Photolux Festival 2022 in Lucca from 21.05.2022 to 12.06.2022 ❤️ The next edition of the International Biennial di Fotografia di Lucca will revolve around the theme of love: a universe of unique narratives and different visual approaches to narrating its multiple shades.

Two great Italian previews: Seiichi Furuya's monograph with the "Face to Face" project and the installation of Erik Kessels "In Almost Every Pictures #16".
Together with them Pixy Liao, Marta Bogdańska, Simone Cerio and many other names among the most important in the international photographic landscape will give life to a rich exhibition program. Curious to find out all of them?

YOU CAN CALL IT LOVE
Photolux Festival 2022
from 21.05.2022 to 12.06.2022, in Lucca.
❤️ The next edition of the International Biennial of Photography in Lucca will investigate the theme of love through several visual narratives and photography practices. . Two great Italian premieres: Seiichi Furuya's monographic with the "Face to Face" project and Erik Kessels' installation "In Almost Every Pictures #16". Together with Pixy Liao, Marta Bogdańska, Simone Cerio and many other authors among the most important on the international photographic scene will be part of a rich program of exhibitions.

AN EXHIBITION EXPLORING SEX, DOMINANCE AND POWERFUL WOMEN Pixy Liao’s personal and intimate photographs are currently exhibited at Fotografiska Stockholm. Your Gaze Belongs to Me challenges views on heterosexual relationships and explores what dominance could look like.

For 15 years, Pixy Liao and her boyfriend/muse Moro, a Shanghai-based musician she met in college, have been exploring and pushing the boundaries of what a relationship is and the expected gender roles in a heterosexual couple. The exhibition, which contains of more than one hundred images, focuses on portraying the dynamic of their relationship but is also challenging conventional socio-cultural ideas of gender constructions and questions of nationality in a globalized world.

Moro made me realize that heterosexual relationships do not need to be standardized. Their age differences (Liao is five years older than Moro) and their native origins (Japanese vs Chinese) are two starting points in the project. But Pixy Liao is also interested in powerful women and female leadership. And by revealing uncomfortable aspects she also puts herself in charge of the spectator’s gaze.

-Moro made me realize that heterosexual relationships do not need to be standardized. The purpose of the experiment is to break the inherent relationship model and reach a new equilibrium, says Pixy Liao.

The project is an ongoing, long-term experiment with staged photographs. Pixy Liao’s images are composed so that the combination of colours, shapes and focus attract us towards the most uncomfortable yet revealing aspects. In a world that idealizes the female body and always originates from the western beauty ideal, Liao’s photographs present new and modern options.

Ai Weiwei, Wu Jian’an, Wang Dongling, Yan Shanchun, Angela Lyn, Guo Hongwei, Song Hongquan, Egami Etsu, Taca Sui, and Pixy Liao
Il Rivellino (Via Al Castello 1, 6600 Locarno, Switzerland)
April 15 - May 15, 2022

Chambers Fine Art is a gallery specializing in contemporary Chinese art founded in New York in 2000. From the mid-1980s onwards in China the growing awareness of international trends in contemporary art resulted in a great deal of daring experimental work that was promptly recognized in the west and began to appear in such international exhibitions as the Venice Biennale and documenta. Recognizing that there was an opportunity to make this work more widely available to a Western audience, Christophe W. Mao opened his gallery in the Chelsea district of New York in 2000, one of the first to have this particular focus. Twenty years later it is a particular pleasure to be able to use the premises of Il Rivellino, the lower level of which has been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and his work on the fortifications of the Castello Visconteo, Locarno.

One of the focal points of FOTO WIEN is to highlight the outstanding work of female photographers in order to counteract the dominance of male positions still prevailing in institutional and art historical contexts. The works on display are diverse in terms of their content and aesthetics. They stand for the diversity of women's photographic work, whereby the exhibition also offers an opportunity to examine works by women photographers who are still little known in Austria. What all women artists have in common is their engagement with political and social issues.

Artists:

Laia Abril, Taiwo Aina, Ebun Akinbo, Alia Ali, Nelly Atting, Poulomi Basu, Nakeya Brown, Grace Ekpu, Bénédicte Kurzen, Pixy Liao, Nengi Nelson, Rinu Oduala, Ayanfe Olarinde, Paola Paredes, Rachel Seidu, Annegret Soltau, Carmen Winant, Etinosa Yvonne, The Journal Collective

Curator: Verena Kaspar-Eisert & Cheryl Newman

1 Festivalzentrale: Atelier Augarten Scherzergasse 1A, 1020

Exhibition Duration 9 – 27 Mar 2022 daily 11:00– 19:00

Opening Mar 9, 2022, 17:00

Muse: The Exhibition, open 18 Feb – 10 Apr at ROSL Clubhouse, London (General Public, Mon to Fri, 10AM – 5PM)

Join us to welcome our new exhibition into Over-Seas House with an opening drinks reception.

Muse is a curated group exhibition of works discussed in art historian Ruth Millington’s new book (Muse by Ruth Millington, released 07/04/22, Vintage Publishing).

The perception of the muse is that of a passive, powerless model, at the mercy of an influential and older artist. But is this trope a romanticised myth? Far from posing silently, muses have brought emotional support, intellectual energy, career-changing creativity and practical help to artists.

Muse tells the true stories of the incredible muses who have inspired art history's masterpieces. From Leonardo da Vinci's studio to the covers of Vogue, art historian, critic and writer Ruth Millington uncovers the remarkable role of muses in some of art history's most well-known and significant works. Delving into the real-life relationships that models have held with the artists who immortalised them, it will expose the influential and active part they have played and deconstruct reductive stereotypes, reframing the muse as a momentous and empowered agent of art history.

The exhibition shows work by contemporary artists Sunil Gupta, Kim Leutwyler, Pixy Liao and Nilupa Yasmin alongside contextual work loaned from The Estate of Francis Bacon and a set of book illustrations from Dina Razin.

Muse: The Exhibition, in partnership with Square Peg, Vintage Publishing and Sotheby’s Institute of Art